I just bought an Alienware 14 laptop with the idea of installing Linux on it and dual booting that and Windows 7 in legacy mode,( 7 shipped pre-installed in legacy mode).
The graphics card in the machine uses a GeForce GTX 765M chipset and I can't find a Linux distro that will display the screen correctly, when I boot a live CD the screen is torn into multiple screens, I just can't find a a distro to display correctly.
I have found a file with a driver that is supposed to work, NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-331.17.run. Is there any way to install that to use that with the live CD without installing the live CD to my hard drive so I can Linux first?
Can anyone help with this or point me to a place where I can get help?
Thanks,
Snyde

The problem with Zorin is that once I select boot the LIVE CD and "try it" and get to the desktop the wifi device isn't "seen" and the video screen is torn into 4 images. I can't get any farther because I can't use the Internet to load additional drivers for the video, even if there are any. I'm trying to find ANY distro that has these drivers in the LIVE CD before it is installed so I can navigate around and use it.
With Ubuntu, after I boot the LIVE CD and get to the "try it" screen and select "try it", it starts to load but the screen goes blank and after a few minutes I can hear the CD drive stop spinning and it goes no farther.
The video used in this Alienware 14 is an NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 765M with 2GB GDDR5
The wifi is a Broadcom 4352 802.11 ac 2x2 and Bluetooth 4.0
I found a video driver, that may or may not work, on the Internet. I downloaded the file: NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-319.60.run, but don't know how to load it after the desktop starts, even if I could navigate the desktop with the screen torn as it is.
I have tried this in "safe video" mode, and with the nomodeset switch, and it makes no difference.
Is it possible to create a package file from the run file and load it somehow after the desktop loads, if I can somehow navigate the torn desktop screen? How do I make the package file?
Ideally what I would like to find is a version of Linux that would render the video correctly and load the correct wifi drivers from the LIVE CD before installation, like I've been ably to do with all of my other laptop and desktop machines in the past, so I can try it before installation.
Thanks for the help,
Snyde

I do not think there are any distros that carry the proprietary driver by default due to licensing reasons. However from the command line you can put in the command "sudo apt-get install nvidia-current" to install the nvidia drivers from the online repos for either of those distros as Zorin is based upon ubuntu.

Since you have been using only ubuntu based distros I recommend trying some others out like fedora or magea to see if they are having the same problems.

My big problem, it seems, beside the video tearing, is the wireless & wired connection. Once I get to the command prompt Zorin evidently doesn't natively support my wired or wireless hardware. When I couldn't get it to connect wirelessly, I tried connecting my LAN to the laptop and NOTHING, no connection.
This is really frustrating! I thought by buying a better machine than I needed that Linux would be a breeze to install! This has been the worst installation I've ever done.
Any idea how to rectify the wired connection problem?
As I see it, I can't install the current Nvidia drivers unless I can get on the Internet and I can't get on the Internet unless I can get my wired or wireless hardware to work with Linux!
Thanks,
Snyde